{"id":440625,"date":"2025-09-21T09:40:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/440625\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T09:40:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T09:40:15","slug":"the-mental-effect-of-seeing-other-f1-drivers-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/440625\/","title":{"rendered":"The mental effect of seeing other F1 drivers crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Formula 1 qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix turned into crashfest with many red flags, but Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a> kept his cool with a surprisingly good qualifying performance.<\/p>\n

After a tough European leg, the young Italian secured fourth place on the Baku grid \u2013 a welcome boost to his confidence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pace has been strong the whole weekend, and definitely the biggest difference has been that I was able to do clean sessions and to build it up. I felt pretty ready for qualifying,\u201d Antonelli said.<\/p>\n

The Mercedes<\/a>\u00a0rookie stayed out of trouble, even though he had to visit the stewards for allegedly ignoring yellow flags during qualifying. That was handled with a reprimand, meaning Antonelli will start from fourth on the grid. It equals his best qualifying result so far for a grand prix, although the 19-year-old previously took pole for the sprint race in Miami.<\/p>\n

With fourth place in qualifying for the main event, Antonelli matched his performance from Bahrain and Canada \u2013 but this time he has outqualified team-mate George Russell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite all these positives, Antonelli made clear that qualifying was far from easy: \u201cThe conditions were very difficult with the wind. The wind was kind of a lottery because it was very gusty and very unpredictable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mercedes' <\/p>\n

Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli<\/p>\n

Photo by: Ozan Kose \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Antonelli wasn\u2019t even entirely satisfied when he appeared in the media pen. \u201cI’m happy but disappointed at the same time, because in that last lap, I got a gust of tailwind and lost a couple of tenths \u2013 two or three tenths,\u201d he lamented.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the conditions were difficult for everyone. Sometimes you get a bit lucky with the wind and other times a bit unlucky, so I cannot really complain.\u201d<\/p>\n

When pointed out that he didn’t make any major mistakes, the Mercedes driver laughed: \u201cWell, that’s because they didn’t really show my last lap! I had two big moments, one in T2 and one in Turn 7. I went full lock. I had quite a few moments, but this weekend the goal was to stay on the safe side a bit more, just trying to build it and then push more lap by lap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides the conditions, another factor made qualifying in Baku extremely challenging: the mental side of things.<\/p>\n

All drivers in Baku were faced with the question: how much risk are you willing to take? With several cars out, a strong result was within reach, but these accidents did show how easily things can go wrong in the streets of Baku.<\/p>\n

When asked about that mental side of things by Autosport, Antonelli admitted candidly that this played an important role during his qualifying session: \u201cYou never like seeing someone going into the wall, because it can hit your mind a bit. You see how tricky the conditions are, and you can lose a bit of focus and start to be concerned, because you know you have no margin for mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is why Antonelli sometimes prefers not to follow everything that happens very closely. \u201cSometimes I prefer not to watch,\u201d he conceded. \u201cWhat can happen to me sometimes is that I go on track and I don’t push as much anymore just because I’m afraid of doing mistakes. So, today was super tricky, but I\u2019m happy with how we stayed calm and composed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Formula 1 qualifying at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix turned into crashfest with many red flags, but Andrea Kimi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[13328,149092,145534,145535,4199,707,4200,4859,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-440625","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","9":"tag-antonelli-opens-up-after-baku-quali-the-mental-effect-of-seeing-other-f1-drivers-crash","10":"tag-azerbaijan-gp","11":"tag-baku-city-circuit","12":"tag-f1","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-formula1","15":"tag-mercedes","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115241629993615960","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}